As the society in Thailand becomes more open to homosexuality and transsexuals, the number of people in Thailand (and coming to Thailand) to seek sex change surgery is on the increase year by year, medical experts at a Bangkok conference dealing with change operations for transsexuals in Thailand, said.

Although in Thailand there exists no official statistics of people seeking sex change operations, Dr Preecha Tiewtranonth, a well-known surgeon, said he was constantly getting more inquiries and performing more sex change operations year by year.

"The reason for this is that people feel more comfortable coming outside because nowadays the public society is much more accepting homosexuals and transsexuals," Dr Preecha Tiewtranonth said.

In some states of the United States and many countries in Europe, Dr Preecha Tiewtranonth says, sex change operations are even included in the country's healthcare and welfare system, because those more liberal foreign societies generally view people wishing to change their sex as having physical and psychological problems and differences since birth, rather than as sexual deviants.

On an average, more than 30,000 men per year in Thailand, seek an sex change operation to become a woman, whereas the average number of women who want to become men is only 1 in 100,000, Dr Thawatchai Boonpatanapong of the Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok Thailand, added.

Dr Thawatchai Boonpatanapong was speaking at an academic conference dealing with the pros and cons of sex change operations for transsexuals in Thailand.

Unlike in western countries, Dr. Preechai said, the average age of people undergoing sex change operations in Thailand is very low, because Thai people did not face such a difficult preoperative process before getting the authorization to change gender.

It takes just about 2-years and sometimes much less in Thailand to complete a change sex, compared with the 5-years or more in western countries, he further added. And the whole sex surgery process cost much less in Thailand.

Surgeon Sirichai Chandarak of Chulalongkorn University's faculty of medicine said: "Thailand had come to be regarded as the world leader in providing topnotch sex change operations and surgery for transsexuals in the past two decades."

"Due to this high-end medical know-how in Thailand, the rate of having sexual climax among men having undergone sex change operations in Thailand is no different to the average sexual climax rate among naturally born women." he added